Life with an EV

A small blog on our exciting venture into ferrying around a family in a new Nissan Leaf Electric Vehicle (EV)

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Leaf getting a free test charge at Aldi, Coulsdon last night

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Three Chargers installed at Aldi, Coulsdon with six spaces, managed by Polar Instant, currently free to charge, but expect ICE'ing in the bays as parking spaces are at a premium and the bays are unmarked, but nice to see more charges in North East Surrey

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PodPoint at Whyteleafe Train Station The charge point was ICE'd by two cars, but you can't blame them, no markings have been set on the parking spaces and also the charge point has not been powered, so cannot function. Now you would think that this is a recent installation, but no, this charger was installed over two months ago and still does not function! What is going on PodPoint?

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The perils of ICE'ing an EV Image from http://c-zero.info/cz/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/blink-notices-for-electric-car-owners-to-use-if-charging-station-parking-spots-are-taken-by-gas-cars_100406874_l.jpg

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Some nice simple tips for charging your vehicle from Ecotricity....

EV Driver Etiquette

Please DON'T

Park petrol/diesel cars in charging bays designated for electric cars It’s called “ICE-ing” – parking an Internal Combustion Engine car (Petrol, Diesel or LPG) in designated electric vehicle charging bays. It’s never acceptable, no matter how crowded a car park.

Unplug another electric car while it is charging The basic rule of thumb at a charge point is...first come, first served. Never remove a connector from another electric car during a charging session, as this may result in damage to the charger and/or car.

Hog a charger...charge up and move on Electric Highway rapid chargers are designed to do exactly that – deliver a rapid charge – in no longer than 30 minutes...charge up and let someone else use it.

Please DO

Help fellow electric motorist to charge If you arrive back at your car to find another EV driver has left a note & number, it’s good form to simply drop them a polite “Charge session completed, thanks” text.

Notify the charge point operator if a charge point has a fault Most faults can be identified remotely by the Electric Highway team – but some, like vandalism, cannot. Please let us know – we can’t fix it if we’ve not been made aware.

Set a good example Please be polite to all drivers – EV, Hybrid or ICE. We are ambassadors for the uptake of electric vehicles.

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The impact of charging.....

So, we have had the Leaf for nearly three weeks now, we charge the car mainly at home and this is working out well, we charge roughly three times a week by putting the Leaf in the garage overnight. This seems to suit our driving requirements, however this week we thought let’s try something different try and use some of the public charging infrastructure….. So first we attempt to charge at Clacket Lane services on the M25, we used the east (towards Dartford) charger and found this to be faulty, after a search for someone who could open up the service road to go to the western side (towards Heathrow) we finally got to a working charger from ecotricity, charged up, grab a coffee and away we go (however took well over an hour). There was another Leaf waiting to charge and of course had to wait till we finished, it did baffle us why the rapids that have a DC and an AC charger can only charge one vehicle at a time.

Next stop this weekend at IKEA in Croydon, approach the bank of chargers ( 1x Rapid and 2 x standard charger), another Leaf was charging on the standard charger and guess what, neither the rapid or the other standard was functioning, so we have a 33% online ratio working at IKEA, we wait until the other Leaf completes their charge and then we use the standard charger for our charge. So in summary we have had a really mixed bag using the public chargers, it seems they are offline quite a lot and when we do find a working charger there is a queue to use these, when discussing this with ecotricity we get the ‘well this is a free service’ and I understand that, but if you were paying for this it would not be acceptable. For EV’s to take off, the consumer needs confidence and at the moment, from what I have seen, the public charging could be a lot better.

(the image attched to this post is a generic stock image and is not my vehicle or IKEA or Clacket Lane)

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Our Nissan Leaf Tekna parked up ready for action

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Paperwork all complete, Leaf not at the dealership, but will be ready on Sept 5th

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two weeks and counting, off to Nissan to complete the final paperwork, wonder if the Leaf will be there?

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British Gas Universal 30A charge point fitted today in garage ready for the EV. We opted for the universal fast charger as opposed to their standard tethered cable 16A charger and paid the associated upgrade cost. We got our application in on Jul 31st before the government grant was changed, so just had to pay the upgrade cost for the universal fast charger. Now I believe there is a mandatory £115.00 charge for the standard charge point

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Prep and Planning Mode

Not long till 5th Sept until we pick up the Nissan Leaf Tekna, still need a few things to do to get ready, transfer monies into accounts, source charging cards and install charger in garage. getting quite excited now…. not long